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Women's Petitions to Congress

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Women's Petitions to Congress In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 1, Document 1 www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 1. Document 1 Document Information: Memorial from the Ladies of Steubenville, Ohio, Protesting Indian Removal, February 15, 1830. National Archives Identifier: 306633 Description: By 1830, women were joining in the emerging grassroots democracy by organizing themselves, as groups of women, within communities and across regions of the country. This petition is an early example of a petition from women advocating for a political issue. In his 1829 Annual Message to Congress, President Andrew Jackson called for removing Native American tribes from the Southeastern United States, and this petition was sent to Congress just two months after his address. The women identify themselves as residents of Steubenville, Ohio. Note, from the crossed out word, that the petition was printed for the use of women living in Pennsylvania, and that it was passed to this group from Ohio. This suggests that the petition was not merely a local expression of opinion, but that it was created as part of a larger movement. The women appeal to Congress to consider Indian removal as a moral issue. They argue that, as a morally elevated, honorable body, Congress should show compassion for the suffering of the tribes and respond on that basis. www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 1, Document 2 www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 1, Document 2 Document Information: Petition of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, 7/13/1836. National Archives Identifier: 306639 Description: This 1836 petition shows women from Massachusetts organizing a state-wide grassroots campaign against slavery. This petition reflects the overlap of politics and religion in the decades after the Second Great Awakening. In an era when evangelical religion was prominent, the petitioners justified their engagement in the abolition movement on spiritual grounds. Slavery, they argued, must be opposed because it is sinful. The petition is one of many that called on Congress to ban the slave trade in the District of Columbia. Surrounded by slave states, the District was home to many enslaved people, and slave sales were routinely conducted within sight of the Capitol. As the Constitution granted Congress exclusive jurisdiction over the District, petitions such as this argued for Congress to exercise its jurisdiction to end slavery where it could. The women also declared their mission to their fellow women of Massachusetts. “We must petition,” they argue, until they persuade every woman in the state to join their cause. www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 1, Document 3 www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 1, Document 3 Document Information: Petition from Women of Brookline, Massachusetts, Praying that the Gag Rule be Rescinded, 2/14/1838. National Archives Identifier: 306638 Description: This petition from a group of women in Brookline, Massachusetts (a town adjacent to Boston) bears the names of two sisters who were prominent advocates for women’s rights, Sarah and Angelina Grimke. Angelina Grimke was the wife of Theodore Dwight Weld, a Boston minister who was one of the era’s leaders in the abolitionist cause. The petition shows how women spoke out against a violation of their constitutional rights, but it also reveals that they were participants in a larger movement. The pre-printed text of the petition left a blank space for each group of signers to identify its locale. The printed text is also attached to a sheet of lined paper by wax seals. This suggests that the printed text was perhaps cut out from an anti-slavery periodical. While there is no evidence of the particular source of the printed text, it was sent to Congress during a decade that saw the emergence of abolitionist publications such as William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator which was printed in Boston and circulated widely. www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 2, Document 4 www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 2, Document 4 Document Information: Petition for Universal Suffrage which Asks for an Amendment to the Constitution that Shall Prohibit the Several States from Disenfranchising Any of Their Citizens on the Ground of Sex, 1865. National Archives Identifier: 26081744 Description: This 1865 petition from a group of women organized by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton called for a constitutional amendment protecting women’s right to vote. The signature page illustrates that the petitioners were women from Rochester, New York City, Philadelphia, Newark, and Boston. The geographic diversity of their hometowns suggests that women’s organizations were becoming national in scale in this era. As the petitioners note, they represent half of all Americans, and that they are being deprived of political rights by the other half. At the hour of Emancipation, they argue, Congress should address this injustice. In a society whose political ideology was grounded in John Locke’s principle that legitimate government is founded on the consent of the governed, the women point out they are captives, governed without their consent, compelled to pay taxes and punished for violating laws they have no hand in creating. www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 2, Document 5 www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 2, Document 5 Document Information: Ten Thousand Petitioners Appeal for a Sixteenth Amendment 12/14/1877. National Archives Identifier: 117874758 Description: This petition is from a campaign led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton as president of the National Woman Suffrage Association. The existence of this group demonstrates how women acted through a national lobbying organization to generate a grassroots political movement. The petitioners call for women to gather “mammoth petitions,” huge rolls comprised of individual signed sheets that, collectively, bear the names of tens of thousands of people supporting their cause. These oversized rolled petitions were created to demonstrate the public support for a constitutional amendment protecting women’s right to vote. The petitions made the “weight of public opinion” visible. The petitioners pointed out that “…the women of the United States… are taxed without representation, governed without their own consent, classed with lunatics, paupers, criminals and idiots before the law, denied the custody of their own children and their own persons…” www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 2, Document 6 Transcript: Petition of Mrs. Amelia Bloomer for relief from taxation or political disabilities. To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, in Congress Assembled. Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, a citizen of the United States, and a resident of Council Bluffs, County of Pottawattamie and State of Iowa — the owner of real and personal property amounting to several thousand dollars, on which she is taxed without representation, hereby respectfully petitions your Honorable Body for relief from this burden of taxation — or for the removal of her political disabilities, and that she may be declared invested with full power to exercise her right of self-government at the ballot box all state constitutions, or statute laws to the contrary notwithstanding. www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 2, Document 6 Document Information: Petition of Mrs. Amelia Bloomer for Relief from Taxation or Political Disabilities, 1878. National Archives Identifier: 5752699 Description: Women pursued three strategies in their work for suffrage in the decade after the Civil War. They petitioned for a constitutional amendment protecting their right to vote, they took direct action and voted in defiance of the law, and they petitioned Congress individually to have their political disabilities removed. Following advice published in advocacy literature of the time, Amelia Bloomer of Kansas, and many other women petitioned Congress to protect their voting rights. In her petition, Bloomer points out that she owns valuable real estate on which she is taxed without representation. Congress, she argues, should either remove the bars to voting placed upon her by the state of Iowa or relieve her of the burden of paying taxes. Along with the other women who participated in this organized petition drive, Bloomer pointed out the injustice of taxation without representation. www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions to Congress Center for Legislative Archives Station 3, Document 7 www.archives.gov/legislative/resources In Their Own Words: Women’s Petitions
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